Be more sensitive when discussing transgender children, please

Coy Mathis, left, plays with her sister Auri, at their home in Fountain. Coy has been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. Biologically, Coy, 6, is a boy, but to her family members and the world, Coy is a transgender girl. (Brennan Linsley, AP file)

By Tyanna SlobeGuest Commentary

Why are we talking about children’s genitalia?

Transgender people are first and foremost people. They are not bodies open to being defined by the media or people’s own opinions, and they are especially not genitalia. They are people. [1]

More and more transgender children are coming out at younger ages and find themselves faced with new and alarming prejudices: school districts, soccer teams, and Girl Scout troops now question whether and how trans kids belong. It’s important that these stories are attracting media attention because discrimination of any sort should always attract interest and enrage people. What is not at all great is the strange focus on children’s genitalia endemic to these stories.

The school district’s lawyer, W. Kelly Dude, was quoted by CNN saying, “I’m certain you can appreciate that as Coy grows older and his male genitals develop along with the rest of his body, at least some parents and students are likely to become uncomfortable with his continued use of the girls’ restroom.”

Coy Mathis’ body has nothing to do with her using the bathroom. To suggest that a 6-year-old’s body is innately dangerous to the bathroom usage of students at an elementary school is to sexualize that child. By bringing a transgender child’s genitalia into question for the sake of discriminating against her suggests that there is something dangerous about her body to the other students, which is obviously not true.

Focusing on trans people’s bodies paves a path straight to dehumanization. A single body part does not ever reflect a person as a whole. Trans people — like all people — have their own dynamic and diverse stories to tell, and their bodies frequently do not have anything to do with these stories, no matter how much a journalist or attorney wants them to. Coy’s story of overcoming such issues as being denied bathroom access or how she has faced discrimination because of her gender would undeniably be a far more honest representation of the girl’s life.

Nevertheless, people like Dude focuses immediately and shockingly on the young child’s genitals. Trans people seem to be the only group to have their privates exploited by the mainstream media in a way that is meant to “shock” people, and certainly not by any choice of their own.

It is particularly obscene to see trans kid’s genitalia being a “topic” up for discussion: transgender children are children, and since when are children’s genitalia a hot topic of conversation?

Dude is certainly not the first person to confuse “genitalia” with “personhood.” Talk about trans kid’s private parts is splashed across news headlines all of the time. Bobby Montoya, who was initially denied admission to Girl Scouts in Colorado because she is trans, also made national news in 2011 for trans discrimination. During the country’s overly dramatic crisis about whether or not little girls are allowed to sell Girl Scout cookies, we saw headlines like “Transgender boy’s attempt to join Girl Scouts initially rejected because ‘he has boy parts’” — again, focusing right in the headline on the child’s genitalia.

We hear the same arguments “against” transgender children from people who say the same thing over and over again to the tune of: That child should not be able to join the soccer team because she has a penis. I don’t know how the parents could let their child live as a boy when she has a vagina.

No matter what your personal views are about trans issues, I think that we can all agree that a kid’s private parts are not up for public scrutiny.

Tyanna Slobe is a 21-year-old English Linguistics and Spanish double major at CSU. She blogs for an organization called SPARK Movement.

[2] that of first grader Coy Mathis of Colorado who is being denied access to the girl’s bathroom in the Fountain-Fort Carson School District: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23523502/colorado-transgender-first-grader-wins-civil-rights-case